Reader Reaction: Charlene Sanders

Charlene Sanders was born in Tunica, Miss., and remembers coming to Memphis to shop with her mother.

They went to Downtown department stores with whites-only water fountains and rode in the back of buses.

"I was too small then to know what was going on," says Sanders, 72. She would move to Memphis as a young woman, working as a cashier in some of the stores she and her mother had visited when she was a child.

Change was slow. Sanders says she accepted things as they were and was grateful as life got better. When she settled into her bed Tuesday night to watch the election returns, all of those years came flowing back. As she watched the returns -- "from beginning to end" -- Sanders says she suddenly realized tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"It was so touching to have a black president and to live long enough to see it," she says.

Now custodian of Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church, Sanders sat on a back pew as the church held a special prayer service Wednesday for Barack Obama.

"It's a change we need for the poor people, the people who don't have insurance, the people who are losing their homes and don't have any jobs," she said.